l, The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton, and The Declaration of Independence Trumbull has drawn the spectator to the spot at decisive moments and has shown what the architects of American independence looked like. The Declaration of Independence (1786-97) is a painting of particular historical significance. Sitting at a table is John Hancock, standing before him are John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.This is how E. H, Silverman describes the creation of this composition: But it is in Trumbull s most ambitious work. The Declaration of Independence, that one can best gauge the lengths to which the artist would go to ensure reality. The idea for the painting was originally suggested by Thomas Jefferson, a good friend in Trumbull s early years. To obtain the portraits of all the sinners of the Declaration, the artist went to considerable trouble. He painted Jefferson in Paris and John Adams in London. Most of the others he did in the United States between 1789 and 1794, visiting many eastern and southern cities. Altogether he painted 36 from life, nine from portraits by other artists, and two from memory. Trumbull had to wait for 30 years until in 1817 Congress voted $ 32000 commissioned him to paint four of his revolutionary subjects as murals for the rotunda of the new Capitol in Washington. But the commission came too late - Trumbull was not able to convey the «fire, plasticity and technical brilliance of his earlier sketches to large works.eight original sketches especially the battle pictures, and the small, almost miniature, portrait studies for the series are unquestionably Trumbull s finest work [1, p. 17-18]. And romantic tendencies penetrated into American art in the early nineteenth century. An attempt to transfer classicism into American painting was made by
John Vanderlyn who was the first American to study in France rather than in England. His first classical subject Marius on the Ruins of Carthage (1807), exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1808, won him a gold medal. Napoleon tried to purchase the picture for the Louvre, but Vanderlyn demurred. His best known work Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos, painted in Paris in 1812, is the most successful ideal nude produced by an American artist. This lucid, controlled and brilliantly painted nude reveals Vanderlyn s remarkable talent. In 1815 Vanderlyn returned to America and exhibited Ariadne and some other paintings that had won him fame in Paris. But in America Vanderlyn s neoclassical works brought him neither success nor fame. Puritanic America was shocked, the prudish New Yorkers saw in the unabashed nudity of the classic heroine a shocking witness to the depraving influence of European taste [9, p. 130-134].
1.3 The Era of Jacksonian Democracy
close of the heroic period in American history brought about a decline in American art. This decline was connected with the advent of the Jacksonian era with its rapid development of capitalist relations, westward expansion and democratization of taste. The middle class grew in numbers and affluence. After the election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1828 all sorts of profiteers, businessmen and adventurers who were making huge fortunes began to play a leading and predominant role in the social and political fife of the country. By the middle of the centur...
